Apple pie

It's a Sunday, I figured I should at least do something productive and I have a lot of apples in the refrigerator, thanks to free fruits from the office. And since it's a waste to let the fruits go to waste, I thought I'd bake some apple pies. I haven't baked apple pies before so it was a bit of a challenge - you'll see why.
I used this recipe by momswhothink as a reference for my apple pies.

Ingredients:
For pie filling:
4 large apples, peeled and sliced
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 Tablespoons butter
1 egg yolk beaten + some milk (to brush over the pastry)

For the pie crust:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 oz butter, chilled and diced
1/2 cup ice water

Directions: 
Preparing the pie crust: 
1. Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl.
2. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3. Stir in the ice water, a Tablespoon at a time, until the crust mixture forms a ball.
4. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
5. Sprinkle flour onto rolling surface. Roll dough out, and place crust in pie plates, pressing evenly into bottom and sides.

Preparing the filling:
1. In a large bowl, toss the sliced apples with lemon juice.
2. Combine sugars, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg; add to apples and toss well to coat.
3. Fill pastry lined pan with apple mixture. Dot with butter.
4. Place second crust on top of pie filling, cut slits in top of crust to vent. Seal the edges of the crust with a fork or by hand.
5. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolk and milk. Brush mixture over top crust.
6. Bake at 200C for 15 minutes.
7. Reduce heat to 180C and bake for a few more minutes until crust is golden and filling is bubbly.

My crust crumbled when I cut into it. Not too sure why it was so. Taste-wise, I thought it was pretty close to good old-fashioned apple pies. Definitely need more practice on making pie crusts. As usual, I'm a lazy baker and I didn't pre-prepare the dough, so maybe that was the cause.
Also I found that I over-filled the pies so some of the filling overflowed out through the slits. Ah well, for a first try, at least my pie tasted quite alright. :)

Jam tart rolls

I always think of jam tarts as my favourite Chinese New Year delicacy, since I only have them once a year. It's one of the must-haves for our home and also as a giveaway to the relatives. We normally bake these yummies in little basket-like forms, but this year mom and I got lazy and decided to make rolls instead. It was a family effort this time around with the brother pumping out strips of pastry, me filling them up with jam and rolling them up, mom popping them in and out of the oven, and the sister-in-law packing up the baked rolls.
What an awesome family fun-filled afternoon!

The beauty about jam tarts/rolls, is basically the melt-in-your-mouth pastries (the shorter they are, the more delicious) and the jam. Unfortunately cooking the jam is the most time-consuming because they need to be prepared beforehand. On the bright side, yummy jam rolls are always worth the effort. :)

Ingredients:
For the jam:
2 small pineapples, chopped up into small pieces
10 Tbsp caster sugar

For the pastry:
250g flour
225g butter
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg yolks
4 Tbsp icing sugar
2 Tbsp corn starch
1 egg yolk and 1 Tbsp milk (beaten - used for egg wash)

Directions:

To make the jam:
1. Put the chopped pineapples into a food processor until everything is well crushed.
2. Add the mushed up pineapples into a wok. Add sugar and cook on medium heat until the liquid is well evaporated, stirring constantly so as not to burn the jam.
3. Let it cook until the jam has thickened, and leave to cool. If pre-preparing the jam, pop it into a airtight container and store in the refrigerator.

To make the pastry:
1. Sieve the flour, corn starch, salt and icing sugar. Then set aside.
2. Add in the butter in the flour mixture, cut into tiny pieces. Use fingers to rub in until mixture is fine and crumbly.
3. Add in egg yolks and lightly knead until well combined.
4. Put dough into pastry press, and pipe out the dough into long strips.
5. Place a teaspoon full of pineapple jam and roll up pastry until enough to enclose the jam filling. Line them on baking tray lined with parchment paper. Brush the top with egg wash.
6. Preheat oven to 175 C and bake for 20 mins or until the surface turns golden brown.

Fruit custard tartlet

For a new years' day potluck party for 15 people today, I made some fruit custard tartlets with a shortbread crust as my contribution. It's a no brainer for me to prepare what I prepare best (and that is dessert), and I wanted something that didn't require too much fuss to prepare yet will look good being arranged out on the table (for photography sake). Tartlets are the perfect little bite for the sweet tooth, and topped with fruits, it adds a little bit of nutritional value.

Ingredients:
The shortbread crust: (Yields about 35 tartlets)
4 oz flour
4 oz rice flour
2 oz caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
4 oz margarine

The filling: (Similar to the blanc mange recipe)
8 oz milk
2 Tsp cornflour
1/2 tsp essence
1 oz sugar

The topping:
Any type of fruits actually. There are no restrictions to the type of fruits to use and here, I used kiwi and grape, cut into small quarters. I chose the fruits mainly for the colours because the green and the maroon create a contrast with my custard yellow.

Directions:

To prepare the shortbread crust:
1. Add the margarine with the flour and sugar. Cut up the margarine into tiny little chunks.
2. Use fingers to rub in the mixture.
3. Once everything is rubbed in and looking like breadcrumbs, add in the vanilla essence and lightly knead until the dough holds together.
4. Flour table surface and roll the dough until it is a thin layer. Use a tart cutter to cut out shapes, press into molds.
5. Bake at 165C for about 45 minutes, or until the shortbread starts to brown and then remove from oven to cool. While cooling, prepare the custard mix.

To prepare the custard: (Similar to the blanc mange recipe)
1. Blend cornflour with a little milk. Place remainder of milk to heat.
2. Remove from fire and pour the heated milk over the blended cornflour. Remember to keep on stirring all the time.
3. Return to stove and stir over fire till boiling. Let the mixture boil for 3-5 minutes. Keep on stirring.
4. Add sugar and flavouring (if needed). Pour into the crust.
5. Assemble tartlets with cut fruits. Remember to move quickly to arrange the fruits because the custard solidifies really fast.

And here we are, perfect fruit tartlets for a new year's day party. I love how the festive colours brighten up the little tarts!

Chicken pie

Most of the time, I don't plan what to cook and I don't like to wait when I want something done. :) So today while out running errands, I had this 'brilliant' idea to bake mini chicken pies because I remembered that I still had puff pastry in the freezer. I say brilliant because I am super impulsive.Traits of a bad cook, I suppose.

The chicken pie filling is relatively easy to prepare, and it's easier still if you didn't have to make the pastry from scratch. Yeah I'm that lazy, but I'm just trying to simplify some things at hand. Given lots of time, there are plenty of recipes and methods from search engines that teach you how to make flaky crust from scratch. Best of all, the pies can be frozen after baking to be enjoyed at another time so I suppose that will be my dinner one of these days. My ingredients were enough for 20 mini pies.

Ingredients:

5 large potatoes, diced

1 large carrot, diced

1 large yellow onion, diced

1 piece of deboned chicken breast meat, sliced into small bite-sized pieces

Half a clove of garlic, chopped 

1 cup of frozen peas

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 can of Campbell's mushroom soup

1 box of puff pastry (the one I bought had 40 pieces)

1 egg yolk beaten + some milk (to brush over the pastry)

Directions:

1. Saute the garlic and onions in about 5 Tbsp oil till fragrant.
2. Mix in the potatoes and carrots to the pan and continue sauteing until the potatoes and carrots are tender. Add in a little water while sauteing.
3. Add in the chicken meat into the mixture and fry till it's cooked. Stir in the frozen peas. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. In a separate pot, cook the mushroom soup as per the directions from the can.
5. Pour the soup into the vegetable mix and let it simmer till the mixture thickens. Remove pot from the stove and let it cool completely. The ready mix should look like thickened clam chowder.

6. Fit in the puff pastry squares into aluminum foil molds. Scoop about 1 1/2 Tbsp mixture into the mold and top with another puff pastry square. Flute the edges of the squares together so that they look nice and pretty.
7. Preheat the oven to 200C. Snip a cross over each individual pie so that the filling is able to expand. Brush the tops of each pie lightly with the beaten egg mixture so that the pies look nice and golden after they are baked. Bake pies for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.
8. Serve immediately.

I served the pies with a cup of hot Lipton tea, and later we had pears and persimmons for dessert. Weird combination I know, but it was indeed a truly delicious meal. And I'm looking forward to defrosting the remaining pies for dinner another night soon.